Where to start? What next? Total cost?

[TheHaitian]

Ok folks need help with my homework!

Where would you start if you had plans to sell a food product but you needed help figure out how to preserve the taste/quality when:

- frozen and boxed up?’
- refrigerated for a long period of time?

Company that does it? Figuring out mass production?

Total costs?

[tskeeter]

Preserving food is mostly about managing two issues.  The growth of bacteria and exposure to oxygen.  

Bacteria is is controlled by refrigeration.  Freezing or holding at below 40 degrees.  Or by killing the bacteria in the product.  Usually by pasteurization, irradiation, or heat sterilization.

Oxygen contributes to spoilage.  By facilitating bacteria growth and by causing oils in the food to go rancid.

Virtually all packaging material allows oxygen to pass through it.  In order of the most effective oxygen barrier.  Glass, metal, plastic, then paper.  Sometimes these materials are combined to balance cost vs. impermeability to oxygen transmission.

More later, gotta run.

[alabamagal]

There are specialists that can help with this. As mentioned above, there are a lot of factors involved.

Are there industry groups that can help, guide you in the right direction.

[TheHaitian]

May 8, 2019 20:43:52 GMT -5 alabamagal said:

Are there industry groups that can help, guide you in the right direction.

That is what I am trying to find out and the costs....

[alabamagal]

I work in pharma industry. There are packaging specialists.  Can't really help more than that.

At my previous employer, I got on a list for some mailing lists for packaging industry.  Sorry can't remember the exact name.  But i would get these magazines on packaging trends, and i would browse, more just for curiosity.  Would be lots of ads, plus industry trends. Sorry can't be more specificc.

[tskeeter]

Carl, I think you would benefit from engaging a product development consultant who specializes in food products.  Just google food development consultant and a good list of folks and companies will come up. 

Question. Can you afford to pay for an initial production run of about 10,000 cases of product?  Set up costs for food processing and packaging equipment make runs of a few hundred cases prohibitively expense.  As the controller of a food processing plant, I used to get inquiries from people who wanted 50, 100, 300, or 500 cases of their product.  It would take in the range of 20 hours to set the equipment to run this special product and about an hour to pack the 100 cases the customer wanted.  What most of these folks needed was one step above a home kitchen, rather than a food processing plant with tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment.

You can save money by making sure your packaging material is a standard size for that type of material.  Take a glass jar as an example.  In a standard size, the glass company makes millions of jars a year and probably provides the required mold.  You should be able to buy standard sizes a pallet at a time.  Use a unique, one of a kind bottle, and you will have to pay about $60K for a mold before the first jar is made.  And, rather than being available as an off the shelf item that you can have delivered within the week, you will have to get a special production run scheduled for your unique jar (normal lead time several weeks to a few months) and you will need to pay for and take delivery on every jar manufactured, not just one pallet.

[Peace77]

You can contact SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) for advice from a volunteer consultant. See score.org

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

There is a lot more involved in packaging than just trying to figure out material.  Moisture content and chemical features of what you want to preserve figure into things too.  Size of the item you are trying to preserve has an impact, and use of said container.  For instance, if surface area is large in your container, it might promote evaporation if you have a wider type of jar, which affects product quality.  

Then you need to consider how product product is going to be accessed after product is bought.  Some containers might be best to keep evaporation to a minimum, but make access to the product difficult for the end user.  So you need to find some sort of balance.

[hoops902]

May 9, 2019 11:37:58 GMT -5 The Walk of the Penguin Mich said:

There is a lot more involved in packaging than just trying to figure out material.  Moisture content and chemical features of what you want to preserve figure into things too.  Size of the item you are trying to preserve has an impact, and use of said container.  For instance, if surface area is large in your container, it might promote evaporation if you have a wider type of jar, which affects product quality.  

Then you need to consider how product product is going to be accessed after product is bought.  Some containers might be best to keep evaporation to a minimum, but make access to the product difficult for the end user.  So you need to find some sort of balance.

Also important is the amount of light that penetrates the packaging, whether the package is a one-time use or resealable, where the item is going to actually be stored and what materials work best with that environment, how the package will be sealed based on the contents of the package (heat seal, cold seal), things like antifog (mostly for greens/salads mixtures).  That's not even getting into the LOOK of the packaging, which means different materials, different inks, etc.

Now that I do the finance work for a company which creates packaging, mostly for food, there is a LOT that goes into it.  

There are lots of product development folks out there for food products.  

[TheHaitian]

May 9, 2019 11:44:16 GMT -5 hoops902 said:

There are lots of product development folks out there for food products.  

These are the folks I need... thank you!

[dannylion]

Is it a new snack?  I like snacks.  


Great.  Now I want a snack.